Creating
Your
Destiny
Table
Of
Contents
Patterns
for Living
H
umans
are patterning geniuses.
We watch our mom and dad walk and then begin to seek to move on our own
two legs-exactly as they walk. We watch and listen to the people around
us speak. We then imitate the utterances we hear and so learn our native
language. We witness how the people in our world behave toward one another
and we set about to reflect this behavior in the process of our relating
to those people around us. And we do this (and so much more) without giving
it all that much conscious thought.
Imitating
the patterns of others and developing our own patterns for thinking and
living is as natural as breathing.
In fact, it is so much like breathing that we often do not take enough
notice of what patterns we are imitating. We tend to think that our patterns
are part of out core identity. "This is just the way I am."
More often than not, however, our patterns are
a product of a random response to stimuli. They are not who
you are. They are simply what-up until now-you have learned to do!
A toddler
sees a spider. He ambles over, picks it up and puts in into her mouth
or possibly ignores it. An
other
toddler, however, could see the same spider and randomly experience terror:
from that moment until now, she has a phobic response to spiders.
Think
of a marquee outside of movie theater: one that is made up of hundreds
of light bulbs.
Imagine for a moment that this is what your brain looks like. Now, over
the span of your life, those lights have quite often responded to stimuli
in a random manner. There was no conscious thought or choice as to what
the lights would spell, what lights would be flicked on, what lights would
remain dark. In certain circumstances, your brain
randomly spelled out the word/response "fear."
From then
until now, your pattern of res
ponding
to the same circumstances has remained the same: "fear." In
other situations you first encountered, the lights randomly spelled out,
"shame" or "pleasure." It has lighted up the same
lights ever since. Whatever the pattern "spells,"
it was created by a random response to stimuli.
The
wiring in your brain has often been arranged without any conscious participation
on your part. Sometimes the results have been useful, but at
the others times not so useful.
The fact is that you can rewire your brain. You can learn to have other responses. You have a choice as to what words (experiences) are spelled out on the marquee of your brain!
You have
unconsciously learned specific patterns that dictate how you are managing,
interpreting and experiencing your life. The demonstrable fact is that
you have learned these patterns quite well. This
proves that you can easily learn other patterns that will be more useful
to you.
I
knew a man who learned to depend on drugs. He
took enough narcotics to put an elephant to sleep, and he did this for
10 years. Every day. He told me that this was who he was. He
had developed this pa
ttern
in response to some difficult challenges he had faced a decade ago. Now,
he no longer had any choices as to his responses. (His words.)
Not
long after his wedding, his wife discovered this particular pattern and
said that there would no sexual patterns created between them until he
stopped taking the drugs. From that
day on he has been drug free. How did this happen? Well,
to begin with, he loved and desired his wife more than he desired narcotics.
He also feared losing her more than he feared the foreseen pain of withdrawing
from drug dependency. From that day on drugs were associated with fear
of the terrifying pain of losing his wife: being drug free was associated
with…some pretty phenomenal sexual patterns. (His words.)
It is TOO that easy!
- You
can decide right now to change whatever you wish to change about yourself.
Just as you easily learned to walk and talk- two very difficult accomplishments-you
can decide to learn other things.
- You
can decide to change how you respond to certain people and situations.
- You
can choose to stop responding as a victim of your environment or of
people.
- You
can decide to change specific personality traits that, up until now,
have hindered your Quest.
- You
can decide to walk away from habits that, in the past, have kept you
from being a healthy, ever evolving human.
- You
can decide to manage your emotional states, rather than allowing your
emotions to manage you.
- You
can decide to learn a new skill(s) and change careers or to lean a new,
exciting hobby.
Decide.
Now. Choose.
Now. Declare war on all that stands
in the way of your Quest. Make a covenant with yourself, with the universe,
with God, to begin making the sort of choices that lead to joy, health,
usefulness and productivity. No more death-producing
choices for you!
Y
ou
may have to fight for a while after you have made these choices, but you
can make the choice this very moment.
You
have been allotted only so much time on this earth: stop wasting
it. Another second just past. What are you going to start doing
differently so as to pack more and more truth, goodness, grace, nobility
and beauty into your life? Ten seconds just past. What changes in your
behavior, your belief systems and in your relationships are you about
to make to see to it that no more seconds are wasted? The
clock is ticking.
And I am
not writing here solely about what to stop doing, but
what to start doing, as well.
When I was
a freshman, I set out to major in voice and minor in piano. At the beginning
of the second semester my piano instructor, Mr. Nelson, asked me what
really wanted in life. Something in his voice
told me that he was not convinced I r-e-a-l-l-y wanted t give my life
to music.
As I began
to defend my commitment to music, he said, No,
no …what do you want to give your life to accomplishing?
What are you willing to give every ounce of your energy to mastering?
You enjoy piano and voice. You are very talented. You love piano and voice…yet,
you do not appear to wish to marry either of them."
H
e
went on to explain that I could have a successful career in music. He
was not questioning my potential or my skill.
What
he was questioning, he said, was the depth of my commitment and the level
of energy I was willing to focus upon learning these skills.
He was not convinced I was doing what I really loved and was concerned
that I was wasting precious moments in my journey. (Not to mention wasting
my parent's money!)
At an early age I had discovered that learning musical instruments came easy to me. I foolishly concluded that this was the only skill I could master, the only "pattern" available to me for generating income. But if I would learn this pattern, learn these skills, what other skills could I learn, just as easily?
- Patterns: How they are formed
- How to change your patterns
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Written
by
Dr. Monte E. Wilson, III
Andrea
Higham, Editor
© 2004 God On The Net, Inc. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced
without permission.